Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum

(Oct 7, 2016 05:04 AM)Syne Wrote: [ -> ]

(Oct 7, 2016 03:23 AM)scheherazade Wrote: [ -> ]Science has demonstrated that we know what we are going to do before we actually do it, a measurement of the delay between thought and action. This minute interval allows for an incredible range of sensory input which might well be the source of so much of what we actually experience yet cannot provide concrete evidence of, at least not yet.

Actually, our experience is likely formed by the mind from a dearth of input. Up To 90% Of Your Perception Could Be Made Up Purely By The Brain

And if you're referring to studies like Brain makes decisions before you even know it, then you may have misinterpreted the results. These studies only test for random choices, which naturally consult subconscious and environmental cues. They have not replicated these studies for non-random choices.

Thank you for the links, Syne.

I would suggest that everything that we experience has already transpired by the time we actually become aware of it, even if the delay factor is very slight and that delay will vary by individual based on their age, experience, reaction time etc.

I do agree that our brain is busy 'filling in the blanks' at all times as a means of filtering and collating the incredible amount of sensory information coming at us from all directions via our many senses. I particularly get a chuckle out of how we read as per the following:


If we can so easily make sense of the jumbled letters on a page, how then can we be so trusting of the input of the rest of our senses and ascribe total accuracy unto same?

Very enjoyable discussing these matters with you. Another time...I am off to burn the midnight oil and make accurate the prices at the grocery store for the morrow.

(Oct 7, 2016 08:20 AM)scheherazade Wrote: [ -> ]I would suggest that everything that we experience has already transpired by the time we actually become aware of it, even if the delay factor is very slight and that delay will vary by individual based on their age, experience, reaction time etc.

I would agree that that holds for external sensory input/stimuli, but not for our experience of our own choices. There have been studies that show that you can weaken/strengthen a person's sense of agency with priming, but none that have demonstrated that choice is determined by physiology.

by Elena
(Denver, CO, USA)

"I used to work at a restaurant located in a little strip mall across the street from my house. The location was perfect for me, down the street from my school, and across the street from my house.

One night I was closing up, just me and the 2 owners. We started talking about the ghost in the restaurant, I had only witnessed one event you could call paranormal. The dish washer had randomly started itself, it was an old restaurant dishwasher with a button you had to push to make it start.

Well that night we were talking about the ghost, the owners told me stories of how it would lock doors, knock objects on the floor, turn on the dishwasher when no one was in the dish pit (that was a huge one), basically do everything possible to make its presence known. As they're telling me this a jigger (the little shot glasses with one end bigger then the other) goes flying across the restaurant into a wall.

Well my boss totally over reacts, and starts yelling, and screaming, and making a big ruckus. I just end up standing there with my fish out of water look watching all of this. After a few minutes of him yelling the front door slams shut. We had it propped open because it was a hot night (there was NO WIND AT ALL). This has to be the freakiest night of my life."----http://www.gods-and-monsters.com/the-ghost-in-my-restaurant.html

Owners set her up. How easy was that? The over reaction by the owner for something that's apparently commonplace is enough to raise an eyebrow for me. Talking about doors locking and things flying just before it happens, too much of a coincidence for me but for a blonde waitress, who knows?

A guy I know fixes furnaces. He told me that one cold night he got a call from someone who claimed a ghost kept turning his furnace on and off. What my friend found was a furnace with 2 on/off switches. This guy had just moved in and had a friend over who unknowingly was flicking one switch on and off, thinking it was a light switch.

Is it these types of people, easily susceptible to the paranormal, that are probably representative of most ghost story believers?

(Oct 9, 2016 05:30 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: [ -> ]Owners set her up. How easy was that? The over reaction by the owner for something that's apparently commonplace is enough to raise an eyebrow for me. Talking about doors locking and things flying just before it happens, too much of a coincidence for me but for a blonde waitress, who knows?

A guy I know fixes furnaces. He told me that one cold night he got a call from someone who claimed a ghost kept turning his furnace on and off. What my friend found was a furnace with 2 on/off switches. This guy had just moved in and had a friend over who unknowingly was flicking one switch on and off, thinking it was a light switch.

Is it these types of people, easily susceptible to the paranormal, that are probably representative of most ghost story believers?

Uh no. The owner's reaction is an authentic expression of the exasperation and frustration he's had with this activity in his own bar. It isn't something a bar owner wants to deal with, what with scared workers quitting and such. It is precisely what we should expect from a man at his wit's end trying to face such a terrifying fact and not being able to do anything about it. Such is the effect of the paranormal. It sort of makes you lose your mind.

(Oct 10, 2016 04:17 AM)Magical Realist Wrote: [ -> ]Uh no. The owner's reaction is an authentic expression of the exasperation and frustration he's had with this activity in his own bar. It isn't something a bar owner wants to deal with, what with scared workers quitting and such. It is precisely what we should expect from a man at his wit's end trying to face such a terrifying fact and not being able to do anything about it. Such is the effect of the paranormal. It sort of makes you lose your mind.

LOL....sure. Owners either have a sense of humor or they enjoy terrorizing staff. For all the times the damn ghost has tossed things around it can't hit a window or break anything. Where is this ghost when patrons eat there? Funny how it's only staff affected by the least damaging of things like locked doors, knocking things onto the floor and turning on dishwashers.

Sometimes when I was a kid on a sleepover, we used to sneak over to the local cemetery in the early morning hours. It was a big graveyard actually split in two by a highway no less. The weirdest visions and noises we encountered were of live people who visit graves at those hours and we never saw a ghost or anything paranormal.

Where are the dinosaur ghosts? Imagine the knowledge we could gain if in fact Casper actually existed. Eventually restaurants, graveyards and the haunts of so called ghosts disappear. Where do those poor ghosts go when that happens?

Yeah, coincidentally, the ghost could only LOCK the door...never UNLOCK it? So...the ghost never did damage, and didn't even leave the place vulnerable to robbery or vandalism. Oh wait, lemme guess. The ghost knew that might set off the alarm. LOL.

Both of you are using arguments from incredulity---that because you don't understand ghosts, or that because they don't behave like you expect them to, therefore they don't exist. Why should what you expect of a ghost be a criteria for it being at all? That doesn't make sense.

---

http://soldiers.dodlive.mil/2012/10/fort...-the-army/

(Oct 10, 2016 06:14 PM)Magical Realist Wrote: [ -> ]Both of you are using arguments from incredulity---that because you don't understand ghosts, or that because they don't behave like you expect them to, therefore they don't exist. Why should what you expect of a ghost be a criteria for it being at all? That doesn't make sense.

The problem with you accusing others of an argument from incredulity is that you must also be guilty of it. An argument from incredulity is BOTH that the incredible must be false AND that the obvious must be true. You are claiming that the obvious must be true. But like any argument from incredulity, you fail to eliminate the possibility that some occurrence could seem obvious yet have other explanations.

OTOH, we are not denying that any of these occurrences happened. We are actually stating the oppose of an argument from incredulity. We are saying they DID happen and are NOT incredible. Where we would likely agree that sufficient evidence would lead us to believe in ghosts, you do not seem willing or capable of admitting the possibility that these occurrences could be mundane or otherwise aberrant perceptions.

Until you do, you are just making the parent fallacy of argument from ignorance, where if something cannot be proven false, it is assumed true. But in reality, things can only be proven true (nothing but mathematics can actually be proven false), so the burden of proof rests with you.

And the dearth of proof speaks volumes.